I made a little progress on this today.
i created a new announcement list and added a column titled xyz with a type of Single line of text.
added a content query web part to my page and set List Type: Announcement.
Exported the web part and updated this
<property name="CommonViewFields" type="string">xyz,Text</property>
imported the web part back into the page.
Then i changed the ItemStyle.xsl
<div class="description">
<xsl:value-of select="@xyz" />
</div>
and saved my changes.
what if anything is missing???